Teeth which are cylindrical in form are known to those skilled in the art, as evidenced by my previous U.S. Pat. No. 4,476,642. In this patent, the teeth have a shank trailing therebehind which is received within a complementary shaped pocket of a holder by which the tooth is mounted to an excavating machine.
Digging teeth which have an upper, relatively flat portion and a lower portion which is circular, in lateral cross-section are known to those skilled in the art. This particular digging tooth is made from a flat piece of metal which is bent into a curved configuration and provided with a sharp cutting edge at the leading end thereof. The tooth is made for digging in soft formations as contrasted to hard formations. This type of tooth presents a large frontal area to the ground and accordingly, requires a considerable amount of horsepower in order to force the tooth to move through the ground with a digging action. As the cutting edge of the tooth is abraded away and lost, the horsepower required by the excavating machine increases until eventually the tooth must be replaced. Sometime hard surfacing is placed on the tooth in order to lengthen its service life.
It would be advantageous to further reduce the power consumption required to move a digging tooth such as described above through the ground with a digging action. It would be especially advantageous to improve the tooth so that it could dig in hard formations. This is the subject of the present invention.